five apocalypses

[danschank]

(sorry i've been so bad about posting, y'alls... ten good things will return again soon... with another two-month-combined entry, unfortunately... spent too much time out boozing with old friends over the holidays, which made me a little less of a culture sponge, as well as a bad blogger. in the meantime...)

5. i'll begin with a plug: my good

Comments

[chocolatebark]

Oh man, I want to read that McCarthy novel and watch Children of Men QUITE badly. Curse you, ackward local theatre schedules!

[danschank]

i think you'll like both. with you on awkward theatre schedules... where is my showing of inland empires already, philadelphia?

[erin_lindsay]

thanks for posting that song so that it's the first thing i hear this morning. so good, so sad.
sorry i missed your call the other day.

didn't know you could DL songs, erin...

[danschank]

... this might affect my uploading in the future!

as for the call, no sweat... truth be told, i was busy writing THIS for most of the day, hahaha. we'll catch up soon though.

how's proust treatin ya?

[brendan62442]

I guess it's a given that you won't get comments on the books. I'll launch into Children of Men.

Children of Men reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. It was the same story, where our hero had a smuggling mission to put order back in the world. There were the same strange houses and inns, the same narrow escapes and friendly white-haired men. It was also some of the same elemental stuff, where they had fertility and woodland sanctuaries as high virtues, and then they pitted it against industry and chaos.

I didn't read much out of it in the way of politics; I felt like the end of fertility was too distant and implausible a crisis to pertain to my world. Maybe the one thing that struck me was just how easy it was for them to make grey Britain look like the evil future.

I found the war in Children of Men seemed more real and believable than the wars in most war movies. And that's impressive, because most war movies are about wars that actually happened.

[chocolatebark]

Children of Men reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. It was the same story, where our hero had a smuggling mission to put order back in the world.

I haven't read Children of Men, so I'm going out on a limb here, but let me just say it would be awesome if P.D. James had the book end with the main character hurling a baby into a volcano.

[danschank]

i guess i could see the parallels, but i hadn't thought of that. and honestly, i don't think they feel particularly similar, probably because the plot seems so secondary to children, and is-- at times, anyway-- rather insufferably the centerpiece of LOTR. maybe another difference is that cuaron's film seems to try to speak through the language of spectacle to get somewhere more interesting, whereas jackson's trilogy just sort of revels in it. i dunno...

[brendan62442]

Though you could make a case for the setting and politics, I felt like Children of Men was about the plot. There was the very dull man, you know, and he got whisked away into a re-invigorating mission. And then his entire life became about the mission.

I liked Lord of the Rings, mostly because I always fall for the epic soundtracks.

[danschank]

dhalgren absolutely came along at the right time. or more specifically, the end of the x-mas retail season gave me enough mind-numbingly dull work time to crack it open.

not entirely sure how i feel about kiefer. i can see what you're saying, but i honestly found that guardian article somewhat pompous and obnoxious (two words i would use to describe 80's neo-expressionism in general, but that's more of a knee jerk reaction). i guess i get a little scared off by the grand-theme-y ness of his work (life! death!, etc.), and i always hate it when art critics make goofy abstract statements like that bit about "feminine swirls" and courbet's origins of the world... i can just picture that dude hitting on one of his students. at the same time, there's a physicality to kiefer (as someone seperate from people writing about him) that's refreshing in relation to our current landscape of paintings that look like drum-'n-bass album covers (which i say with my uptight fucking exacto blade in hand... i'm guilty of this as well). plus there's the

[hooveraardvark]

i went to an event at the museum of natural history a few years back - octavia butler and samuel delany were both speaking. poor delany got overshadowed, since there were a lot (A LOT) more butler fans in the audience, and thus he didn't get to answer many questions. but he did sign jonah's book

[danschank]

i love butler, so i can't entirely lament her receiving attention, but that still sucks. i'd imagine the two of them get lumped together quite a bit too (as homosexual african american sci-fi authors) which is probably inevitable, but is also sorta unfortunate. delany teaches at temple actually, and my roommate (who is a doc candidate there) has met him a few times. i hope to see him lecture at some point myself! (i actually just missed an opportunity... thanks work!)

with you on opposition to the government being at a point where it's no longer a matter of complexity, but i think unfortunately, the solutions to bush and co. are as infinitely fine-tuned as ever (i.e. i haven't come across an exit strategy for iraq yet that seems to have much of a fighting chance of not ending in immense human suffering, though i'm sure there are plenty better than belligerently throwing in more forces). i think what i like about children of men is that it seemed to use my inevitable knee-jerk reactions, rather than sit back and lecture me about them.

[hooveraardvark]

i too love butler, though i still think earthseed was kind of a half-baked concept. i always thought she considered herself asexual rather than homosexual, but i could be wrong.

[danschank]

yeah, i hear ya. though i must say that i was reading bergson's the creative mind shortly after the parable novels, and i kinda like the idea of change as something, i dunno, "a priori" or "eternal" or whatever... i think that makes a lot of sense, actually. wouldn't necessarily call it "god" though, and i do think it's, as you said, sorta half-baked. i liked sower a lot better than talents too... something about legalized christian-right-slavery seemed a bit much to me, much as i sympathize with the intentions. that said, i think all of the xenogenesis books are totally amazing, and kindred is probably in my top five novels ever!

i thought i read something (possibly in the butler lj community, further proof that i am a true blue dorkus malorkus) about butler living with a female partner, but i might have heard it through the grapevine. i'm not sure i personally believe in people being asexual, to be honest (though i guess i can't speak for all of humanity there). hahaha...